About Me

I feel I am able to communicate
well and I have a good grounding
in people skills.......Basically
all humanity is the same!
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The foundation of this blog was cemented by the Assassination of Hrant Dink on 19.01.07. I was listening to Setrak Setrakian’s rendition of Arno Babajanian’s composition, Elegy. So
moved by Hrant’s shortened life by the virtue of speaking his mind that I wrote the poem, ‘Without You’ with Hrant's family in mind. The subject matter of the recognition of the ‘Genocide of the Armenians in 1915,’ is very much at the heart and the minds of Armenian's Internationally.
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I want to say: 'Thank you,'
to Keith for the Creation
and Launch of,
Seta's Armenian.blogspot.com
and Armenag for the sources
of information.
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If you feel it would be appropriate, please include a link to my Blog from your Site. I would like my Blog to be as eclectic as possible and include material from as many and different sources so long as it is relevant to my subject matter.

About My Blog

This well-established Blog is worth visiting on a regular basis for a wealth of information of interest to Armenian nationals and to the Armenian Diaspora world-wide. Although it has a particular role in promoting international recognition of the Genocide, the Blog encompasses much more and includes many articles of general appeal to all those concerned with Armenian affairs. Much of the content is difficult or impossible to find elsewhere and the long list of links provided gives easy access to a plethora of material on social, political, religious, educational and cultural matters, and many news items from around the world.

Monday, 30 January 2012

On this very day, a chilly morning of January 1649, a king of England left London’s St James Palace, under armed escort. He walked across the adjacent park, till he arrived at the Banqueting House, in Whitehall. There King Charles I mounted the scaffold and was beheaded. A dreadful, heart-rending cry went out from the assembled crowd such as, a man later swore, ‘he never wished to hear again’. Then the executioner held up the royal head, streaming with blood: ‘The head of a traitor!’ he shouted. No one dared to contradict him.

Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan dictator, cut off the King’s head after defeating him in the civil war years before. Had Charles been willing to give up episcopacy, the hierarchy of the Anglican Church of which he was supreme governor, he might have saved himself but his conscience prevented him. The King had principles. Unfortunately he also lied to his captors, promising compliance while simultaneously plotting and scheming. ‘There are people to whom you do not owe the truth’. A tricky notion in moral theology – Charles may well have subscribed to it. If he did, it did him no good.

Both Charles and Oliver were practising Christians, of course. The high doctrine of divine right of kings sustained and puffed up Charles but his foe had Parliament behind him. Cromwell aimed at theocracy, not democracy, mind. The Puritan rule of the Saints that followed abolished all popular entertainments like theatres – Shakespeare was dead by then, good career move – and made adultery punishable by death, first time since King Canute. But the Puritans’ triumph was hollow. In 1660 the monarchy was restored and the dead king’s son, Charles II, ascended to the throne. Cromwell’s body was dug up and subjected to indignities.

The Church of England does not canonise people – too Romish – but if it ever came close to that, it was for the murdered monarch. A special liturgy commemorating Charles, ‘King and Martyr’, was drawn up and inserted in the Anglican Prayer Book – it also enjoined a day of fasting on 30 January. Anglo-Catholics cherished it. Alas, the service vanished in Victorian times. The Church, divine right notwithstanding, had to swallow foreign usurpers like Dutchman William III and German George I. All very melancholy but...might, too often, is right.

Apparently, the present Prince of Wales will not elect to be Charles III, when his time comes, but another name. Can’t quite blame him. The Stuarts were a singularly jinxed and not always edifying dynasty. Mary Queen of Scots also lost her head, Charles II was debauched, James II was deposed and at Culloden the Hanoverians crushed Bonnie Prince Charlie’s tartan army. The last of the Stuarts was Henry IX, an amiable Cardinal of the Roman Church. Napoleon, rumour has it, would have put him on the English throne, had he succeeded in invading England. You know the end of that one.

‘Gold-filling in a mouthful of decay’, playwright John Osborne termed the British monarchy. A lurid, rhetorical tag by an angry thespian. He also opined that ‘the royal symbol’ was dead. Hhmmm... if so, why waste his ink? What is the point of attacking a corpse? I wonder whether Osborne was in his cups. Anyway, he was wrong. The huge interest, the controversies the Royals still engender all suggest the thing isn’t quite defunct yet. They stand for a bit more than mere, hideous celebrities like Beckham and Lady Gaga. The gold-filling keeps glittering and fascinating. Why?

Alan Watts, an old mentor of mine, suggested a theological, nearly supernatural explanation. The old divine right. Not quite in the sense the Stuarts meant it, no. Still, by virtue of being the honorific head of the national church the monarch represents, whether people are conscious of it or not, a link with Heaven. The Coronation Service exemplifies that well. The anointing of the sovereign with holy oil, like the prophets and kings of ancient Israel and English rulers since King Edgar in 959, his clothing with sacerdotal vestments like chasuble and dalmatic, the receiving of the Bible with the words ‘The most valuable thing the world can afford’ – all those and more gesture mystically towards the sacred, the holy, a cluster of symbols and meanings connecting the monarch and his people with something more than just human and secular - the supreme identity, the holy being, the King of Kings above. God may not quite be an Englishman but through the monarch and the Church the English people can perhaps feel a little more close to the Divine.

Republicans and sceptics will mock and scorn, sure. Fiddlesticks! Pie in the sky! Just tourist trappings! Actually, the critics’ own irrelevance shows them up. Cromwell’s challenge to Charles I was real. The Commonwealth had plenty of sturdy, fanatical supporters, fired by a powerful religious creed. Republicanism’s followers today could hold their meetings in a telephone box. They have no ideology, no strength, they mean nothing at all. Never mind the current austerities, there is simply no public taste for scrapping the monarchy in Britain. (The only Queen-hater I have met in years was a Canadian priest in Rome over Christmas – but then he was of Irish origin...)

A more cogent sceptical argument might be that, on the whole, British people are indifferent towards the Crown. Is there something in that? A wise old priest way back told me, ‘Frank, never forget, the relationship between the English and their Church and their monarchy is one between love and indifference.’ That might be true, I think, but how could the poor Italian priest be sure of that? Being English - birth bars me forever from that high honour. Anyhow, that lovely word, ‘love’, is still part of the equation. It all depends how it swings, no?

As he got up to go to his death, King Charles I decided to wear a double shirt. The morning air was freezing. ‘If I shake from the cold my enemy will think I am afraid. I will not expose myself to such reproach’, he said.

Spoken like a brave man. Martyr or not, I shall shout ‘All Hail to the King!’

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Captain St. Sarkis (or Sergius as he is known in the non-Armenian sources) was a fourth century Roman soldier, and later a Captain who was held in high esteem. He is commemorated as a martyr by the Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox churches. According to the Armenian Church sources, together with his 14 soldiers and companions, St. Sarkis was martyred for the sake of the Christian faith. He is one of the most beloved saints among the Armenians although he himself was not Armenian. During the reign of Constantinus the Great, St. Sarkis was appointed the General in Chief of the region of Cappadocia bordering Armenia. When Emperor Julianos-the-Betrayer started the persecutions against Christians, St. Sarkis and his only son Mardiros fled the Roman Empire, seeking refuge in Armenia. The Armenian king Tiran, grandson of King Drtad (Tiridates), received them cordially. From Armenia, St. Sarkis went to Persia and joined the army of king Shapouh as a Captain. However, learning about the saint’s Christian faith, the king ordered him to denounce it and to worship the pagan gods of Persia. St. Sarkis refused and in his rage, destroyed the temple. The annoyed crowd of pagans fell on the saint and his son killing the son, and arrested St. Sarkis to be imprisoned. St. Sarkis remained unshaken in his faith and was ultimately beheaded. Years later, St. Mesrop Mashtots brought the relics of the saint to the village of Ushi where the Church of St. Sarkis was built. According to one of the Armenian folk tales, upon return from one of his victorious battles with his companions and going to sleep, the king ordered forty young women to kill the brave soldiers. One of the women,

seeing the handsome and peaceful face of the sleeping St. Sarkis, fell in love with him and instead of killing him, kissed him. Awakening from sleep and seeing what had happened, St. Sarkis smashed the gates of the city, and taking the young woman with him, escaped from the king. It is because of this folk story that young people in love consider St. Sarkis as their intercessor, helping and supporting them. This year, the Feast of St. Sarkis will be celebrated on Saturday, 4th February. It is preceded by a three-day fasting period. Congratulations to all who carry the name Sarkis, Sargis, Sako, and Serge. Click Here for the flyer about our celebration of this patron saint of St. Sarkis Church in London.

Click Here for St. Sarkis Church Ecumenical Service Click Here for St. Sarkis Church Badarak & Harissa

Help us strengthen the Armenian Church ministry and programmes in the UK and Ireland and perpetuate it for future generations to come. Learn about the Armenian Church Trust -UK by visiting our website: www.armenianchurchtrust.org.uk

PLEASE NOTE that funds raised for ACT-UK directly support the programmes and events of the Primate’s Office and are not for the ACCC.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE FOR ACT-UK MANAGING BOARD ELECTED

On Wednesday, 11 January 2012, the Primate presided over the first meeting of the Managing Board (MB) of the Armenian Church Trust of the United Kingdom (ACT-UK), to discuss the constitution of the Managing Board of ACT UK and elect its Executive Board. Invited to join the MB were a group of leaders of the Armenian community, including representatives from the Armenian Church communities in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff and Dublin as well as benefactors who have contributed to the Charity.

The meeting began with a prayer followed by an introduction to the objectives of ACT-UK and its administrative structure, by the Primate. A financial report of the income and expenses of the ACT-UK for the year 2011 and a projected budget for the year 2012, were then discussed. Those present then elected the following as the Executive Committee of the Managing Board of ACT-UK: Hagop Mouradian, Chairman; Anoushka Kourkjian, Treasurer; and Tanya Harmandian, Secretary.

According to the ACT-UK constitution, the MB will be the body that makes the final decisions regarding the expenses and investment of funds.

Meeting the Russian Orthodox Bishop

On Friday, 20th January, His Grace Bishop Vahan Hovhanessian, Primate, visited the Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Sourozh, in London, His Grace Bishop Elisey. This was the first meeting between the two hierarchs since the consecration of Primate Vahan as the Bishop of the Armenian Diocese of the UK. Bishop Vahan, accompanied by the Revd Fr. Shnork Baghdasarian, Pastor of St. Sarkis Church, was greeted by His Grace Bishop Elisey at the gate of the Dormitian Cathedral in London. The Russian Bishop gave the Armenian clergy a tour of the cathedral and elaborated on the details of their forthcoming plans of renovations. The clergy were then invited to the Bishop’s residence where they discussed the relation between the two sister churches and dioceses as well as issues and programmes of mutual interest to the two sister Christian peoples, such as church charities and diocesan constitutions. Fr. Shnork’s knowledge of Russian helped in conducting some of the conversation in Russian! The two hierarchs committed themselves to meeting regularly to organize jointly the mission and programmes of their dioceses. Bishop Vahan thanked His Grace for his gracious welcome, and hospitality and presented him with several books about the Armenian Church theology. Bishop Elisey reciprocated the gesture.

Bishop Vahan meeting with H.G. Elisey, Russian Bishop of the United KIngdom

HAVE YOU VISITED OUR DIOCESAN WEBSITE RECENTLY?

www.armenianchurch.co.uk

“Our clergy will be happy to visit and bless your home. Call your local Armenian Church office.”

28 JANUARY 2012

ISSUE 4, VOLUME 3

His Holiness Karekin II Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians

CATHOLICOS THANKS FRANCE

On Tuesday, January 24, His Holiness Karekin II, the Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, sent a letter of gratitude to French President Nicolas Sarkozy on the occasion of the adoption by the French Parliament of a law criminalizing the denial of Armenian Genocide. “From the spiritual center of all Armenians, the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, we convey our patriarchal blessing to you, the President and the government officials, and people of France,” His Holiness wrote.

“The French Senate stood up for justice and human rights, and today the friendship between the Armenian and French nations is warmer with this new milestone ... It sheds light on the memory of the Armenian martyrs, and strengthens our confidence that the Armenian Genocide will be condemned among nations.”

Meanwhile, locally in the UK, Bishop Vahan in his turn sent a letter of thanks and gratitude on behalf of the Armenian Church and people in UK and Ireland to the French president and Senate. CLICK HERE to read our Primate’s letter.

SPECIAL POINTS OF INTEREST

AND/OR CALL-OUTS

Prayers for Patriarch Torkom Manougian

His Grace Bishop Vahan Hovhanessian has called on Armenians in the United Kingdom and Ireland to join him in praying for the health and recovery of His Beatitude Archbishop Torkom Manoogian, the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem.

According to the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, His Beatitude was admitted to a hospital in Jerusalem, on 19th January, where he has been drifting in and out of consciousness. Patriarch Torkom will turn 93 on the 16th of this February.

Archbishop Torkom Manoogian is the 96th in a succession of Armenian Patriarchs of Jerusalem, since Patriarch Abraham in the middle of the 7th century. .

Patriarch Torkom was born on 16 February 1919, in a refugee camp near the Iraqi town of Ba’quba, north of Baghdad. He joined the St. James Armenian Seminary in his early teens, and was ordained a deacon on August 2, 1936, by Patriarch Torkom Koushagian. Three years later on 23rd July, 1939, he was ordained a celibate priest and given the name Torkom. He was elected the 96th Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem on March 22, 1990 and enthroned on 1st November of the same year. Pilgrims from the UK and Ireland led by Primate Vahan Hovhanessian, had the honour of meeting His Beatitude and receiving his blessings last January. May Our Lord, the Heavenly Physician, grant our Patriarch a speedy recovery and the fullness of health, according to His will.

Abp. Torkom Manoogian, Patriarch

PLEASE VOTE IN SUPPORT OF THE ACTION OF THE GOVERNMENT OF FRANCE

Click Here(choose the first option)

28 January 2012

ISSUE 4, VOLUME 3

SCRIPTURE READINGS

According to the Armenian Church Lectionary

Sunday – 29 January

Isaiah 61:10-62:9 2 Timothy 2:15-26 John 6:15-21

Monday – 30 January

No assigned reading

Tuesday – 31 January

No assigned reading

Wednesday – 1 February

No assigned reading

Thursday – 2 February

No assigned reading

Friday – 3 February

John 1:1-4:11

Saturday – 4 February

Proverbs 3:13-17 Isaiah 41:1-3 Ephesians 6:10-17 Luke 21:10-19

BIRMINGHAM ELECTS MPC FOR THE 2ND YEAR

Last Sunday, 23rd January, His Grace Bishop Vahan visited the Armenian community in Birmingham to celebrate Badarak and preside over the first Church Assembly organized by the Mission Parish Council (MPC). This also happened to be the Sunday the Birmingham MPC launched its Sunday School programme for children. Fifteen children have already signed up and were in attendance actively participating in this new educational ministry of the Birmingham Armenian Church MPC. At the conclusion of the church services, His Grace reflected on the parable of the mustard seed, (Matt 13:31-33), asserting the importance of Christians remaining faithful to their values even when threatened by death and martyrdom. “Our martyrs of the 1915 Genocide knew that very well, and demonstrated their commitment to their faith and people by their martyrdom” said Srpazan Hayr. Referring to the life, courage, leadership and martyrdom of Hrant Dink—who was shot and martyred on 19th January 2007—as an example of living the parable and demonstrating its meaning, Bishop Vahan added: “Hrant Dink’s martyrdom gave birth to a powerful grass-root movement of reformation and renewal not only in Turkey, but around the world, which honoured the memory of the martyrs of the Genocide, and brought the issues of human rights’ abuse and genocides into the vanguard of the world media and politics, in a way that no other man-made programme or strategy could have created.” The faithful were then invited for lunch and fellowship in the church hall, courtesy of the MPC, with the Primate and Revd Fr. Robert Murphy, Pastor of the Saint Peter Romn Catholic Church in Walsall. Following lunch the first Annjual Parish Assembly started with the Bishop presiding. The session commenced with Bishop‘s prayer, following which Chairman Silva Petros offered her annual report which listed the various meetings the MPC had had with the Primate, the various celebrations of Badarak at two different churches, the Primate’s visitations and house blessings during the year 2011, as well as the MPC’s financial report. A lengthy discussion followed concerning the various projects proposed by the MPC for the year 2012. New ideas and programmes were made from the floor. The Bishop then introduced the candidates for election for the Mission Parish Council for the year 2012.The following were elected: Silva Petros, Vardkes is Yepremian, Klara is Bradley and Dr. Shahe Boghosian.

28 JANUARY 2012

ISSUE 4, VOLUME 3

DUBLIN MISSION PARISH TO HAVE ITS ANNUAL ASSEMBLY AND ELECT MPC

The Mission Parish Council of the Armenian Church in Dublin and its surroundings, is preparing for its first annual meeting, which will take place this Sunday, 29th January, 2012 in Taney Parish Church, Dublin. His Grace Bishop Vahan Hovhanessian will celebrate the Badarak and preside over the Annual Assembly of the Mission Parish. The Assembly’s agenda will include a report by the Chairman of the MPC, Mrs. Ayda Lundon, a financial report of the expenses and the budget of the MPC, discussion of forthcoming projects and new ideas, including the possibility of obtaining a Church property in Dublin. The last item on the Agenda, before adjourning will be the election of the new Mission Parish Council members to serve for the year 2012. If you live in Dublin or its surroundings, please make every effort to join us this Sunday and register as a member of the Parish. The Mission Parish was established by His Grace Bishop Vahan, with the blessings of His Holiness. It was officially recognized by the Republic of Ireland in September 2010. Following the first general meeting in November 2010, His Holiness officially acknowledged the establishment of the church community in Dublin as a Parish of the Armenian Church of the UK and Ireland.

BISHOP OPENS GENOCIDE SEMINAR IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS

Human rights figures representing many forgotten minorities met to debate international persecution affecting a number of nations. The event itself was set the day before the anniversary assassination of Hrant Dink (19th January 2007), the former editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos. Baroness Randerson welcomed all to the House of Lords and invited Mr. Eilian Williams a welsh Christian to chair the evening, who in turn invited Bishop Vahan to start the evening with a prayer. Following the opening remarks, the programme included a pper by Desmond Fernandes on the current persecution in Turkey followed by Mr. Elian William’s summary of Dr Suran Cam’s paper on the crypto-Armenians in Turkey. Hiarbir Mari spoke on the persecution of Baluchis and Wilson Chowdhry spoke on the abuses of Christians in Pakistan respectively. The evening concluded with a lengthy discussion and several suggestions for concrete steps to make the voices of the victims more audible in the media and the political chambers. .

PRAYER COURSE – BIBLE STUDY

This Thursday, 2nd February, will be the fourth and final session of the four-session course on

Write captions for the selected photos.

Prayer in the Armenian Church Traditions. The session will include a summary of the main points discussed in the previous three sessions, followed by a discussion of how to plan a personal prayer discipline, that works!

The end of the four-session course, marks the resumption of the weekly Bible Study sessions in English. The Bible Study group will resume meeting on Thursdays at 7:00 PM in the Nevart Gulbenkian Hall. All Are welcome.

DEACONS’ TRAINING SESSIONS

The Deacons’ Training Programme, of the Primate’s Office, will resume its weekly sessions this Monday, 30th January at 6:35pm in the St. Sarkis Church. Members of the Deacons’ Training Programme help in the various churches on Sundays and travel with the Bishop for the celebration of Badarak at the Mission Parishes in the UK and Ireland. New participants are always welcome.

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Dedicated to United Kingdom's Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January 2012) and its message "Speak Up, Speak Out"

The Armenian Genocide remains a defining chapter in modern history, as it paved the way to Hitler's Germany and beyond. The Armenian issue has become more complex in over years because of Turkey's continued and forecful denial of the historical record -- threatening to serve as an exemplary case of mass murder and denial as policies of state. On the other hand, more countries recognise the Armenian Genocide than ever before, and ordinary Turks have begun to speak out and bear witness to the wrongs suffered by Armenians.

The Gomidas Institute remains at the forefront of academic research and publications related to the Armenian Genocide. The Institute's Armenian Genocide Documentation Project, as well as other monographs, have had a great impact within academia and politics.We hope to continue working in this direction.

The Gomidas Institute is an independent academic institution dedicated to modern Armenian and Regional Studies. For more details about our work please write toinfo@gomidas.org. For our publications please visit www.gomidas.org

________________________

NEW PUBLICATIONTelling the StoryThe Armenian Genocide in The New York Times and Missionary Herald 1914-1918

by Anne Elizabeth Elbrecht

with a foreword by Dickran Kouymjian

Telling the Story focuses on two leading journals, The New York Times and Missionary Herald, to see how news of the Armenian Genocide filtered through to the United States between 1914-18. It also looks at how the American public reacted to such news with a humanitarian intervention program. There were undoubted differences between the two journals, as The New York Times was a leading news organization while Missionary Herald was part of an institution with vested interests in Turkey. However, the flow of information to the outside world was clear and compelling, especially as many reports were actually written by United States officials in Turkey and leaked to the press by the State Department in Washington DC.Telling the Story is an invaluable addition to our understanding of the Armenian Genocide and United States policy in the Near East.

BIBLIOINFO:Anne Elbrecht,Telling the Story: The Armenian Genocide in The New York Times and Missionary Herald 1914-1918, London: Gomidas Institute, 2012. 254 pages, map, pb., US$28.00 / UK£18.00. To order please contact info@gomidas.org

I too have family on both sides and friends, my grandparents and (All four of them) spoke Turkish, Arabic, Greek and my parents spoke Turkish, we share almost the same culture as the Muslim, Islam and Jews before Armenian's became Christians in 301. Even our food is similar… with variations. The point I am trying to make is that Armenian’s are passive, we have been passively fighting for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide for almost one hundred years, and we still are. Even Turks making comments on this site, admit or agree it was genocide and so much pain still exists in our hearts! But why deny the Genocide? We know it happened! We also know the Turkish government, ploy to keep it from new generations by destroying vital historic facts from Schools, Colleges and Universities! They must not be allowed to change Armenian History and more over Turkish history too! Masses are under the illusion it was because of the transitional period, the Young Turks of the day would tell you otherwise. And what’s more, your forefathers do not like talking about it! Why not set their souls and minds free, by allowing them to admit to it and enter heaven with a clear conscience.

Turkey, take the initiative, if you think this is just political, then don’t just say it. Do something about it! We cannot make you! It has to come from the Turkish side. So many of our Armenian women and girls were raped, don’t you think you have Armenian blood with-in you? Or will you deny that too?

I love my fellow humans! This denial only serves to destroy humanities love for each other, be it for family or for all humanity!

‘I saw humanity was on the verge of a new era, like those started by Christ and Muhammad. I also understood such a new era demanded a new type of man.’ Thus speaks a man about to be executed, Otto Dietrich Zur Linde, in J.L. Borges’ Deutsches Requiem. He meant Nazism. If Hitler had overcome, if his millenarian Reich had got going, then indeed a new, fearful kind of human being, a putative ubermensch, would have arisen to rule reality.

The Third Reich’s ghost has vanished forever but...is it possible a new epoch, a novel, indeed better type of human being might actually be in gestation? The Occupy movement, the anti-capitalist rebels, the Arab spring, the desperate youth all over the West protesting against the stifling austerities the old seek to impose on them, the Islamists rising into power in the Middle East, even the rioters and looters hitting England’s cities last Summer – are they perhaps, absurd though it may seem, the signs, the harbingers of a new era?

Consider Christianity. Christian man and pagan man are anthropologically antithetical. Tertullian, a radical theologian from North Africa, chided the dying pagan world about its many crimes and perversions: ‘We are not like you. We do not fight each other in the arena, like wild beasts. We do not abort our unwanted children. We shun adultery, incest and fornications. We do not kill our disabled babies. We do not lust unlawfully after the flesh. We do not torture. We do not covet the wealth of others. We do not persecute the innocent. Instead, when we are unjustly attacked we do not revile but we bless our enemies...’

Tertullian’s list is also a matter of desiderata, of ideals. Still, the sort of human being commended in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount was totally at odds with pagan behaviour 2000 years ago, as it is today in twilight, post-Christian Europe. The Beatitudes – exalting and blessing the meek, the lowly, the guileless, the simple, the pure in heart, the oppressed, the peacemakers, the non-violent – would have struck even a pious pagan as masochistic, perverse. Yet the same counter-cultural Gospel propelled the servants of the Messiah out among the vast multitudes of the Roman Empire – and converted them to its glorious Easter faith. Christ thus forged extraordinary revolutionary values, values that gave rise to the epoch dated Anno Domini – the Year of the Lord. A new man was born.

About 600 years later, with the Hijra, another human type arose in Arabia. Islam also inaugurated an epoch. Thomas Carlyle, that eminent Victorian critic and radical, was correct in including the Prophet Muhammad amongst humanity’s heroes. The dynamic force unleashed by the Qur’an and by Muhammad’s polity empowered desert tribesmen to overturn kingdoms and conquer half the ancient world. A force, note, that does not seem extinguished yet.

The 1978 Iranian revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini illustrates the point. As I just told Sahar TV in an interview at lunchtime, it was a shockingly surprising kind of revolution. A revolt against ‘the modern world’ – the world of secular modernity. Khomeini’s political ideas inspired Muslims everywhere – and scared the living daylights out of corrupt oil sheiks and smug Western liberals alike. They still do.

Muslim man is not the same as Christian man. The two types, the ideals are different. The kind of human being created by the Islamic revelation has his distinctive features and characteristics, setting him aside from other types. That entails conflict. Inevitably so. I am not being polemical. Christianity posits a similar, necessary antagonism to any resurgent paganism. Between Christ and Belial there can be no fellowship.

Zur Linde was perhaps selective in his examples. Pity he did not mention the lofty Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. On the non-theist side – fair is fair – some would instance Soviet man. Lenin too attempted to found a brave new world. Bolshevism energised the ragged and the wretched of the earth into formidable militants under the red flag. Communist man, homo sovieticus, was to be as distant from bourgeois types as Neanderthal hominids were from homo sapiens. The new humanity would renounce alienation and exploitation of man by man in favour of utopian social virtues lived out in a socialist paradise. Alas, well before the disintegration of the USSR wondrous communitarian Soviet man had degenerated into a morose, sullen creature, sans autonomy and sans personality. His passing is generally unlamented. RIP.

What might a new, future type of human being look like? The priest can only gesture towards possibilities. Oddly enough, a cue comes from Empire, a ranting text by the Italian intellectual & former terrorist Toni Negri (co-authored with Michael Hardt). He concludes his far-left diatribe against imperialism by praising St Francis of Assisi. Francis, the son of a rich merchant in Umbria, gave out his wealth and even his clothes to the poor and created a radical community of propertyless brothers. Negri perceives a canny strategy at work: to redeem the poverty of the masses Francis embraced their condition, became himself poor and so ‘discovered there the ontological power of a new society’. Francis’ canticles revel in a joyous existence, inclusive of all beings of the natural world, a sort of sacred cosmic ecology: beasts, the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, the oppressed and the exploited, brother sun, sister moon, even sister death...Negri sees parallels with our time: we need to posit against the arrogance of power ‘the joy of being’.

Post-Marxist, Heideggerian ravings, perhaps. The Franciscan way, its revolutionary poverty, did critically challenge nascent capitalism, true. (Today it would terrify the banks!) And Francis’ ode to life appeals to the young. He himself, like Christ, was a young man followed around by a bunch of young people. Francis is thus a hero for our time. However, he was rooted in transcendence. His ethics included explosive values like selflessness, virginity, celibacy and chastity – as popular as the plague today, it appears. Hence, a no-no?

Not necessarily. Just like the pagans denounced the early Christians as freaks, as anti-social subversives and ‘haters of the human race’ and yet later succumbed to the new era, so...geddit? If God wills it...He is god of surprises, after all.

St Francis’ tremendous prayer, ‘Make me an instrument of thy Peace’, was once notoriously and blasphemously recited by former PM Maggie Thatcher, that fiendish apostle of greed. A hypocrite, she never meant it. But what if good people were really to pray that prayer? And if God truly heard it? Would a new era then dawn?

‘I saw humanity was on the verge of a new era, like those started by Christ and Muhammad. I also understood such a new era demanded a new type of man.’ Thus speaks a man about to be executed, Otto Dietrich Zur Linde, in J.L. Borges’ Deutsches Requiem. He meant Nazism. If Hitler had overcome, if his millenarian Reich had got going, then indeed a new, fearful kind of human being, a putative ubermensch, would have arisen to rule reality.

The Third Reich’s ghost has vanished forever but...is it possible a new epoch, a novel, indeed better type of human being might actually be in gestation? The Occupy movement, the anti-capitalist rebels, the Arab spring, the desperate youth all over the West protesting against the stifling austerities the old seek to impose on them, the Islamists rising into power in the Middle East, even the rioters and looters hitting England’s cities last Summer – are they perhaps, absurd though it may seem, the signs, the harbingers of a new era?

Consider Christianity. Christian man and pagan man are anthropologically antithetical. Tertullian, a radical theologian from North Africa, chided the dying pagan world about its many crimes and perversions: ‘We are not like you. We do not fight each other in the arena, like wild beasts. We do not abort our unwanted children. We shun adultery, incest and fornications. We do not kill our disabled babies. We do not lust unlawfully after the flesh. We do not torture. We do not covet the wealth of others. We do not persecute the innocent. Instead, when we are unjustly attacked we do not revile but we bless our enemies...’

Tertullian’s list is also a matter of desiderata, of ideals. Still, the sort of human being commended in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount was totally at odds with pagan behaviour 2000 years ago, as it is today in twilight, post-Christian Europe. The Beatitudes – exalting and blessing the meek, the lowly, the guileless, the simple, the pure in heart, the oppressed, the peacemakers, the non-violent – would have struck even a pious pagan as masochistic, perverse. Yet the same counter-cultural Gospel propelled the servants of the Messiah out among the vast multitudes of the Roman Empire – and converted them to its glorious Easter faith. Christ thus forged extraordinary revolutionary values, values that gave rise to the epoch dated Anno Domini – the Year of the Lord. A new man was born.

About 600 years later, with the Hijra, another human type arose in Arabia. Islam also inaugurated an epoch. Thomas Carlyle, that eminent Victorian critic and radical, was correct in including the Prophet Muhammad amongst humanity’s heroes. The dynamic force unleashed by the Qur’an and by Muhammad’s polity empowered desert tribesmen to overturn kingdoms and conquer half the ancient world. A force, note, that does not seem extinguished yet.

The 1978 Iranian revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini illustrates the point. As I just told Sahar TV in an interview at lunchtime, it was a shockingly surprising kind of revolution. A revolt against ‘the modern world’ – the world of secular modernity. Khomeini’s political ideas inspired Muslims everywhere – and scared the living daylights out of corrupt oil sheiks and smug Western liberals alike. They still do.

Muslim man is not the same as Christian man. The two types, the ideals are different. The kind of human being created by the Islamic revelation has his distinctive features and characteristics, setting him aside from other types. That entails conflict. Inevitably so. I am not being polemical. Christianity posits a similar, necessary antagonism to any resurgent paganism. Between Christ and Belial there can be no fellowship.

Zur Linde was perhaps selective in his examples. Pity he did not mention the lofty Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. On the non-theist side – fair is fair – some would instance Soviet man. Lenin too attempted to found a brave new world. Bolshevism energised the ragged and the wretched of the earth into formidable militants under the red flag. Communist man, homo sovieticus, was to be as distant from bourgeois types as Neanderthal hominids were from homo sapiens. The new humanity would renounce alienation and exploitation of man by man in favour of utopian social virtues lived out in a socialist paradise. Alas, well before the disintegration of the USSR wondrous communitarian Soviet man had degenerated into a morose, sullen creature, sans autonomy and sans personality. His passing is generally unlamented. RIP.

What might a new, future type of human being look like? The priest can only gesture towards possibilities. Oddly enough, a cue comes from Empire, a ranting text by the Italian intellectual & former terrorist Toni Negri (co-authored with Michael Hardt). He concludes his far-left diatribe against imperialism by praising St Francis of Assisi. Francis, the son of a rich merchant in Umbria, gave out his wealth and even his clothes to the poor and created a radical community of propertyless brothers. Negri perceives a canny strategy at work: to redeem the poverty of the masses Francis embraced their condition, became himself poor and so ‘discovered there the ontological power of a new society’. Francis’ canticles revel in a joyous existence, inclusive of all beings of the natural world, a sort of sacred cosmic ecology: beasts, the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, the oppressed and the exploited, brother sun, sister moon, even sister death...Negri sees parallels with our time: we need to posit against the arrogance of power ‘the joy of being’.

Post-Marxist, Heideggerian ravings, perhaps. The Franciscan way, its revolutionary poverty, did critically challenge nascent capitalism, true. (Today it would terrify the banks!) And Francis’ ode to life appeals to the young. He himself, like Christ, was a young man followed around by a bunch of young people. Francis is thus a hero for our time. However, he was rooted in transcendence. His ethics included explosive values like selflessness, virginity, celibacy and chastity – as popular as the plague today, it appears. Hence, a no-no?

Not necessarily. Just like the pagans denounced the early Christians as freaks, as anti-social subversives and ‘haters of the human race’ and yet later succumbed to the new era, so...geddit? If God wills it...He is god of surprises, after all.

St Francis’ tremendous prayer, ‘Make me an instrument of thy Peace’, was once notoriously and blasphemously recited by former PM Maggie Thatcher, that fiendish apostle of greed. A hypocrite, she never meant it. But what if good people were really to pray that prayer? And if God truly heard it? Would a new era then dawn?

The international community and particularly Armenians, Turks and citizens of France were closely following the French Senate's day-long debate on whether to criminalize the denial, in France, of the Genocide of Armenians. Immediately prior to the debate, the prime minister and foreign minister of Turkey threatened France with severe diplomatic and economic repercussions if the Senate affirmed the proposal.

The French Senate voted 127 for to 86 against. Following President Sarkozy's signature, it becomes law, criminalizing the denial of the Genocide of Armenians.

Someone high-up at the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism must be an enlightened Soul and more of a Democrat than any of the Eurocrats, having subsidized this film by Őzcan Alper.May that highly evolved Soul become a Prime Minster of a truly democratic Turkey one day, proud of its multi-ethnic constituents rather than the ridiculous ultra-nationalist mantra – “Proud is the Man who is a Turk” nonsense – sang throughout schools in Turkey under the portrait of an Atatűrk framed with Crescent flags.

Whoever is that enlightened Soul, I hope he can free Zarakőglu and Leila Zana and many others from prison, and shield Turkish intellectuals from the evils of Article 301 of the criminal penal code, by abolishing it altogether from the forthcoming new Constitution of Turkey.I hope that the latter shall not be yet another political Ottoman-type trickery to genocide more people.

And, whatever you are up to, dear Reader, do not miss the first five minutes of this masterly film – As if in a live theatre, in the total darkness, a cock crows – a detail suggesting that we are in a village – dogs bark, cows moo, horses neigh, suddenly the unexpected sound of helicopters approaching, women and children shriek, bombs explode, machine-guns shoot, a horrible mixture of the sounds of war, the screen lights up with a most beautiful horse, racing for his life, his breathing cleverly amplified on the microphones (an excellent detail of a sensitive film-director), the target of the mortal hullabaloo, running away like a proud Kurdish peshmerga, a mountain guerilla fighter trying to survive an unfair battle with a US-equipped genocidal State-army.

The Horse successfully avoids the first shot, but on the second he finally falls, blood down his beautiful belly, like a pregnant woman, struggles to get up to fight another day, but sadly it cannot because of a third shot from an invisible sniper, and gradually, slowly with his back turned to the viewer as if in deep shame that he could not survive, stretches his legs and dies like a Swan, like a Tchaikovsky-ballerina in a most beautiful breathtaking posture … the film-director has succeeded in a most remarkable way to instantly create an immediate emotional bond between his film and the viewer, something Anglo-Saxon film-directors have yet to learn to achieve in Hollywood!

Alper’s Horse is as much a classical symbol and the metaphor for human freedom. As my psychologist wife, Clare Pilikian confirms; you can lasso a wild horse to tame it, but kill it?Never! To kill a horse is the lowest point of barbarism and criminal depravity … only inhuman wretches of genocidal intent are capable of such an atrocity.

And you would not be wrong to presume as much, as during the film you will soon discover through the eyewitness accounts that such a genocidal crime was indeed committed by the Turkish army, during the 1990’s, under the very filthy noses of our Western imperialist governments tacitly encouraging the Turkish State, arming it to the teeth to wipe off 8 thousand Kurdish villages off the map of central Anatolia, once the lands of very ancient Armenia … where the horse was first ‘domesticated’ historically.Rock-carvings, archeological bones-evidence, backed by classical literary reference (Xenophon’s Anabasis) prove the existence of horse-cults in the Armenian Anatolian Highlands, precisely where the Kurdish horses are being slaughtered in this film today.

The greatest single obscenity of modern imperialist history is the fact that the Kurdish people, a huge majority of perhaps 60 million, spread through several countries of the Middle East, still lack a homeland.

The Ottoman Young Turks that attempted to genocide the Armenians in 1915 intended to do the same to the Kurds (they said so to Morgenthau, the American Ambassador in Ottoman Turkey), after abusing their unsophisticated, un-educated, illiterate tribal leaders to do their genocidal dirty job.The present-day enlightened Kurdish leadership (their Parliament-in-exile) has already apologized profusely and profoundly to the Armenian people for their earlier leaders’ ignorant participation in the Young Turk crime, having understood today that the Turkish state did finally come round to doing the same to them in our own days, when Kurds were arrested and tortured and killed in prisons for merely speaking Kurdish at home – Leila Zana, a Kurdish MP is back in prison today, having already been there for a decade previously … And the first national hero ofthe Kurds who could transcend tribalism and medieval Sharia laws against women, Abdullah Őcalan, who could bring total peace and democratic federalism to Turkey has been in solitary incarceration on the Imrali island in the Sea of Marmara since 1999 … hilariously, 1000 military personnel guard him – How more ridiculous the Turkish State-genocidal madness can be!Őcalan’s first Islamic name in Arabic means God’s slave, not Mr. Erdogan’s slave … unless of course the latter thinks he is Allah himself, which is not unlikely.

The Turkish State has this strange Sado-Masochist habit of killing their friends … it is what the Young Turk Leaders did to their Armenian Masonic bosom friends, ignoring and betraying their Masonic obligation to protect them at all costs from such violence! They killed Hrant Dink, their greatest Armenian friend trying to forge a brotherhood with the Turks!They made a song and dance for decades about Kurds being “Mountain Turks”, only to kill even their … horses!What if the Turks were … field-Kurds thus murdering their own brothers!

Sitting before a wall of thousands of passport-sized photographs of victims, the survivors tell the camera of their true experience of the Turkish soldiery invading their villages, separating men from women and children, and simply massacring them for absolutely no reason… when all alive are dead, they attack the stables, their horses!

The Turkish army would enter a Kurdish village; give the inhabitants an hour to desert their homes, before they burn down the lot, thus creating 4 million refugees of Kurds within their own homelands, anciently of Armenia.

In a blue-tinged documentary film within the film, you witness tanks with Polis (in Turkish) inscribed on them, stopping in a village, soldiers jumping out of their tank-holes with machine guns, tearing boys from their screaming mothers and beating them to a pulp before your very eyes! “By 1992, a way of killing people was found fit for Kurds, called murder by unknown assailants” …I could ‘see’ my very own maternal grandmother named Isgouhi (= the true one) Der-Arsenian (= of the Male God) sitting there with the same black scarf covering her head, looking like a raven, telling us how the Turkish gendarmes came to their village Khassgal-Izmit searching for … weapons.They dragged out her teenage sons, beat them mercilessly and pointlessly … My grandparents later had to buy some rusted gun-bits from some bashibozuks to hand them over to the Ottoman cut-throats in case they returned for future inspections.

And my grandmother IsgouhiDer -Arsenian used to sing those heart-braking laments and lullabies, which did not sound like true lullabies, but more like goodbyes to the dead children … from murdered mothers – precisely what the Kurdish women do in this film in front of walls covered with a thousand faces …

And Sumru (played Oscar-winningly by Gaye Gűrsel), a shapely young university post-graduate from Istanbul, records them with shocked intensity, although she is a kind of Turk, and does not know Kurdish.She is shown with her boyfriend (Harun) on a bus full of Kurdish students amidst … Turkish Crescent-flags, but singing Vinceremos = we shall be victorious – and here is an unpredictable eye-catching detail – the students sing not sitting-down in the bus (as you would expect), but standing-up and applauding … it proves an original directorial mind at work.

Cut to a scene on a train, the window imprinted heavily with the nationalist Crescent silhouetted through a succession of mountainous landscapes and a lake (Van?)The Crescent finally disappears – we are traveling through (Armenian) Kurdistan – while Sumru reads a sweet sad letter from Harun informing her that he had to go … he knows he is not coming back because he will be killed – the violence of the state is always incomparably greater than that of the rebels – nevertheless, he hopes, just hopes against hope that perhaps … he’ll see her again one day, perhaps in another world, and signs “your lover from the Mountains”!

Sumru (whose name means Summit!) gets out at Diyarbakir, today the capital city of the non-existent Kurdistan, yesterday’s Tigranagert (= build by Tigran) the Great, the capital city built by the Armenian King whose empire in 180 BC stretched down to Palestine, from where King Tigran had transported a whole community of Jews to enliven with trade the very life of his brand-new city … The speakers announce that trains have arrived from Istanbul, Ankara and Malatya, establishing Diyarbakir as the multi-ethnic hub joining major sections of the Turkish map.Yet, the camera pulls back to show you a blue-uniformed Turkish policeman on the platformwatching the crowds intently … Such telling details are abundant in this film – Alper, like all great creative artists, couples with his perfect grasp of the overall image, a masterly eye for the constituent detail.

Sumru reassures her mother by mobile that Diyarbakir is not as dangerous as the Istanbulis think it is … no bombs exploding in the streets, even though her own heart is shattered by the absence of her Kurdish boy-friend who had left her three years ago to join the PKK guerillas in the mountains.She has had no news from him since.

As if to avenge herself on the people, Sumru goes around with her tape-recorder documenting the sounds of the city, holding her high-tech microphones at waist-levelpushing it forward like a small machine-gun startling the war-worn inhabitants … the city with its famous black basalt walls can suddenly throw up a Roman ruin still habitable.Sumru finds the film-maker Ahmet (played perfectly by Durukan Ordu), who fancies himself as the ‘Turkish’ Al Pacino, but instead has been documenting the eyewitness accounts of the current genocide his people are undergoing by the post-modern Turkish state.The Turkish state can deny the genocide of the Armenians in 1915 all they want, argue that it could have been a massacre – as if a massacre being less than a genocide were permissible … but surely, no sane person could deny that the Kurds today, on the watch of the Anglo-American imperialists are being massacred only and only for the sole reason of being … Kurds!If that is not genocide, then Turkey’s Prime Minister Mr. Erdogan is the … Vatican Pope – Hear ye, Dan Brown, a new international bestseller for thee about a crypto-Turk as a Catholic Pope, shot by an ASALA crypto-Armenian as a Mountain-Turk terrorist!

Love Impossible

There is an intense attraction between Sumru and Ahmet, but the genocidal context of their relationship is such that the two can never develop any natural human warmth into any form of sexuality.This secondary theme of the film is developed so skillfully and sensitively as to be one of its most original aspects – the impossibility of love developing let alone blossoming, even though the desire is there all along haunting their every waking moment.I shall be seventy soon, and have seen a thousand films, but have not seen yet another film on the subject, tackled with such intense humanity, sadness and compassion for the young potential lovers.

Sumru decides to exorcise the ghost of her boyfriend, by a final search, and asks Ahmet touchingly to drive her to a very dangerous area of high genocidal activity.Ahmet refuses point blank.Sumru has even a telephone conversation with Ahmet to thank him for his intellectual help and to say goodbye. But a jump cut suddenly shows us an endless seeming road, a close up on Sumru as the passenger in the front seat, and finally a camera shift to the driver being … Ahmet. We now hear that Ahmet’s Dad was a truck-driver working on the roads to Iran, one of the countries that harbor a considerable population of Kurds (the film is dedicated to two Iranian film-makers in-prison).As a child, Ahmet had witnessed the death of his father shot from behind in the public square of their village – obviously another peshmerga-victim by unknown assailants...

More than a genocide-film – Lighting Lessons for film-industry

On his blue tinged TV screen, Ahmet had watched one of his archival films of a boat carrying a gigantic statue of Lenin … reclined – No Soviet sculptor would dare portray Lenin as anything but a stand-up god!Now, under the moonlight, unable to sleep, having just enjoyed the hospitality of a Kurdish peasant family, Ahmet and Sumru talk of their dreams for the future – through this dialogue, half-lit like a painting in dark-orange moonlight, the film-director suddenly effectively and affectively emotionally uplifts his film into the noble heights of humanity and dreamy Socialist compassion.No Hollywood film-director is capable of displaying such emotional-intellectual cinematic depth, imparting to the film further complexities of immense significance.

In Hollywood, believe it or not, they do not know yet how to light night-scenes … because they are concerned that their film-goers are so dumb as to want to see everything all the time on the screen.Turkish film-directors have no such inhibitions – they are not frightened of leaving dark-black sections in their night-time scenes – as in the lighting technique of the German Expressionist black-and-white Cinema.Thus the superbly beautiful, Rembrandt-esque creative lighting of pitch-black night-scenes in Turkish films contains lessons for the international film-industry.Alper’s night-scenes in this film are a case in point.

Ahmet dreams of a true-socialist future (the film’s title translated into English is The Future Lasts Forever), which he defines poetically as being able to ride his … bicycle one day with Sumru skirting the coastline of the Black Sea stretching through several countries and their borders, reaching the city ofVarna, in Bulgaria … when people everywhere would work no more than 5 hours a day … something the British imperialists are desperate to destroy throughout the European community, adopting the Nazi ideal of raping populations to death by slave-work, to merely fatten the capitalist Fat Cat Bankers and swine!Alper’s film thus achieves instantly a universalism beyond its immediate theme of state-organized genocides.

O-ro-ro-tsa-yin – the Armenian Lullaby

The socialism-dreaming Ahmet drives Sumru at dawn to the local cemetery covered in snow and romantic mist (for which the climate in the Rize district of Hamshen is famous).Ahmet, in deep sensitivity gives Sumru space to look for Harun’s grave, while he like the mountain-Kurd that he is wanders off into the beautiful landscape.Sumru, skillfully underplayed by the actress, goes from grave to grave, almost (you feel palpably) hoping that she would not find it … and alas, alack unfortunately she suddenly hits upon it … a gradual sob bursts on her face, pulling her up and pushing her into the opposite direction Ahmet had taken … You know that their love shall be even more impossible now … a wild black horse on white snow wanders aimlessly …

And what a creative originality of conception; you would think that Harun’s now proven ‘disappearance’ would be the open door through which the potential lovers could find the happiness they deserved as a couple, so well-suited to one another … instead, even the potential of such a joy of future life is destroyed as a direct result ofthe ongoing genocide. On a long shot, the couple getting gradually more lost in the mountain fog and mist developing, the film soundtrack plays a most beautiful Armenian lullaby, accompanied on saz (recorded by Ludvig Durian, music by Khatchatur Avetissian) orchestrated with a haunting melisma (sang majestically by the Chamber Music Choir of Radio Yerevan), rendering the last five minutes of the film as un-missable as its first five minutes … and the gems in between.

And the greatest of these gems is the one, right in the mid-stream of the film-flow, transforming it into a most complex and skillfully constructed film-script of immense depth and historical significance – and here is how;

Sumru, whether by luck or by design, playing as intelligently ambiguous as possible, comes across the ruins of a dilapidated Armenian church, Sourp Giragos, Ermeni Kilisesi, Dyarbakirin the care of an old Armenian (played by Sarkis Seropyan, a colleague of the murdered Hrant Dink).His script-name Antranig in Armenian has several semantic referents, most importantly meaning the First-born … (here) of Anatolia.

The people of Turkey do know that the Armenians were the very first people in Anatolia, and they were there as late as in 1915, and they are still there as crypto-Turks, born of the thousands of the stolen young girls during the genocide … Talaat, the great genocider and the grand Vizier of the Young Turks wanted only a single Armenian left on this planet, to be skinned and stuffed as a Museum piece! Today, there are 10 million the world over, plus perhaps 3 million as crypto-Turks, the Turks of Hamshen all being such …

Antranig was also the famous guerilla commander, the Őcalan of the Armenian people fighting for survival. The bekji (= caretaker) Antranig of the Diyarbakir-church has daughters in Switzerland, but refuses to join them for a comfortable old age, and tells Sumru precisely what … Hrant Dink himself told me once in Istanbul explaining why, oblivious for his own personal safety, he would never leave Turkey; “anonts vosgornereh ais hoghin dag en” = their bones (implying the bones of our ancestors, let alone the massacred ones) are under this earth (buried in this land).The Turkish Deep-State made sure that Hrant Dink’s bones joins them!

Antranig says to Sumru in Turkish, “you look like our girls”.And in an absolutely masterly coup de theatre, the film-director suddenly lets Antranig ask in Armenian, “Haieren kidess? = Do you know Armenian?”, and Sumru answers in (I don’t know if you guessed it, yes!) in fluent … Armenian, to tell us that she is actually – a second lightening! – Hamshentsi … a crypto-Turkish Armenian.

The genius of this film-director shines brilliantly in the skill of inventing meaningful and conceptually original complexities with minimal means; suddenly, the present genocide attempted on the Kurds is superimposed on the genocide of the Armenians, the first-borns of Anatolia, of which the Armenian-speaking Hamshentsis are a living proof of the plan’s total failure. Genocides in history have never succeeded, and will never! The Kurds will have their country in the end.The pity of it is the waste of priceless human blood spilt, and precious human beings – god’s children all – swallowed up by Satan, the military junk-heads of this world.

There is a clever third strike of a cinematic lightening in the above scenes – Sumru pleads with Antranig to look for and find for her his mother’s recorded voice singing a mournful Elegy … Antranig is reluctant initially, but eventually, on Sumru’s third visit, plays the tape for her, on the porch, as rain falls heavily everywhere like the tears of all the Armenian and Kurdish mothers lamenting for their murdered children, while Antranig explains in Armenian that his own singing-mother was sacrificed during the 1915 chart … subtitled as genocide in English, the exact translation of which in Turkish would have been soykιrιm – the mostdreaded and denied word of the post-modern Turkish state-vocabulary.

For this fact alone, this film can be regarded as the most aesthetically satisfying political art-film of the last two decades of world-cinema, which brings me to the beginning of the film, on a par with perhaps the greatest political film of all time, Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925).

Alper’s sequence on a par with Eisenstein’s

Its world famous sequence of sheer genius and total originality is the five minute sequence of The Odessa Steps; the Tsar’s soldiery, in their light white summer tunics march down seemingly endless stone-steps rhythmically, robotically, with their bayonets stuck out like their penises, massacring the revolutionary demonstrators … a jump cut on a close-up of a mother pushing a baby in a pram, falls to the ground shot dead.The pram then rolls down the steps into the scattering panicked crowd!

The incident historically never took place (although The Times of the day reported government firing on the demonstrators in the streets, never from the steps) – it was the unique invention of Eisenstein’s genius. The second’s appearance of the actress of Italian parentage, Beatrice Vitoldi made her so famous in the Soviet Union, that in 1931, she was appointed as the first Permanent Soviet Ambassador in Italy … Sadly she was recalled to Moscow in 1937, arrested and tried during Stalin’s Great Purge.

Alper’s horse-genocide sequence goes one better; although the scene is staged – I am certain no horse was killed for the filming – on a closer observation, one can detect a paucity of theatrical blood on the belly of the downed horse – in Hollywood they would have loved to have poured buckets of blood on the tranquillized animal!

Although Alper’s sequence is based on a factual story told by an eyewitness in the documentary section of the film, nevertheless the cinematic realization is entirely his own.

And finally, fully conscious of the new found pride of the Hamshentsi Turks in their Armenian parentage, I can insist that the film-maker’s surname Alper is a version of the Armenian word akhper = brother, very common in Eastern Armenian, in the neighborhood of Hamshen.His first name, Özcan (in Turkish = pure blood, a shameful racist term), in form I think is the Armenian word Vorskan = Hunter.Thus, Özcan Alper is the Turkicized Armenian Vorskan Akhper = Hunter-Brother, which is an extremely ancient character preserved in Armenian folklore, as a linguistic fossil denoting the pre-historical times of hunter-gatherers roaming the lands of Armenian Anatolian Highlands.

Armenian communities throughout the world should make an urgent effort to see this most beautiful, politically powerful, educationally visceral, aesthetically sensational great film in local cinemas – For all enquires to organize a local /community showing, seeContact below;